Tag Archives | bozo virus

One of the worst things about the clown apocalypse was just sorting out the sick from the opportunistic psycho-killers, who used the disaster to cover their own heinous activities.

Many victims of these clown psychos, or clownsickles, as they are now known in the official history of the Clown Apocalypse, the Tome of Whiteface, were first responders: EMTs, cops and of course, the Carnie Corps.

In case you’ve lost your copy of the Tome of Whiteface, The Carnie Corps were a secret organization that had been preparing for the Clown Apocalypse since the times of Ancient Rome. (Of course, they used to be called the custodes de stercore, or keepers of the dung, in those days.) Since the times of the Circus Maximus, long had it been prophesied by the keepers that there would come a time when the buffoons would run amok, and whiteface would cover the world. Only the ancient order of the custodes de stercore would be able to stop them.

Alas, none of their carny mind tricks were a match for a pscyho-killer with a chainsaw, and the Carny Corps were devastated in the early time of the apocalypse. Who knows what horrors might have been avoided if we’d had their ancient dung-wisdom to help us?

Tragic as these early deaths were, there was poetic justice, as most of these clownsickles would succumb to the bozo virus themselves, and usually clowned themselves to death in gruesome and horrible ways. (Chainsaw juggling was by far the most common.)

This isn’t terrifying is it? He looks kinda fun, right? Sure, up until the point he starts to eat your face.

One of the mutations of the Bozo Virus that was most horrifying was the one that caused Buffoonabilism, a combination of intense clowning and an alarming desire to eat human flesh. This mutation seemed to be limited to North America, primarily in the eastern United States, but there were some instances of it in Alberta, Canada as well.

The few remaining survivors the Clown Apocalypse report that these incidents would seem somewhat innocent and fun at the start, and then get really horrible, really fast.

First the Buffoonibals would be joking around with the other victims of the plague, doing pratfalls, stuffing themselves into small cars, and then you would hear The Laugh.

The Laugh, as all survivors of the Clown Apocalypse remember, is the sound victims of the disease made as they experienced either physical or emotional agony. Those infected by the Bozo Virus were unable to cry in pain, or scream, or make any other sounds except for high-pitched, insane laughter.

The Clown Apocalypse was not universally grim, unless you were coulrophobe with a debilitating fear of clowns.

Apart from the moments of hilarity you’d sometimes get when you saw someone who was previously uncoordinated juggling while riding a unicycle, or the amusement of watching a dozen police officers in white-face try to stuff themselves into a Volkswagen Beetle, there was a significant bright side to the pandemic.

While most were affected by the Bozo Virus in standard ways — the orange frizzy hair, slappingly large big feet, and the standard white face — some had only a hint of clownishness in their appearance.

The disease forced its victims to clown themselves to death, but this required a certain self-confidence and uninhibited playfulness. (Scientists now know this is because the virus attacked the parts of the brain that allows us to control our behavior.) A certain segment of the population became very sexy clowns, in both dress and in their routines.

If not for the near-collapse of civilization, a new porn industry would have tried to exploit this off-shoot of the virus, but alas, we only have news footage and a few first-hand reports from survivors of the virus.

And for all the coulrophobic masochists unaffected by the virus, it was a bozo-nanza.

It became clear after the initial chaos, that some people had a natural immunity to the Bozo Virus. The vast majority of humans were infected, but some were unaffected by the clownish behaviors and grotesque physical changes caused by the disease.

Individuals who were ALREADY clowns, for example, escaped the relentless bug, that caused its victims to literally clown themselves to death. And many of these fine folk actually helped civilization survive. Some of these people were part-time clowns, and they had a variety of day jobs. (No doubt, jobs where they dreamed of all the setups and bits and “blow-offs” they would perform on the weekends at birthday parties and so on.)

In France, however, this had unfortunate effects, for there, the most common kind of clown is the mime. Abhorred by many audiences, mime is in fact one of the core set of skills used by many clowns, and so, experienced mimes were immune to the virus.

But the problem, in France anyway, was distinguishing the “real” mimes from the victims of the bozo virus, which had mutated, and made all its victims turn into mimes. Freed from the approbation of their audience, these faux-clowns organized the sick into vast armies of silent, creepy, beret-wearing mummers; they invaded neighboring countries.

Belgium fell first. Then Luxembourg. Then the Netherlands. The Alps and the Pyrenees provided natural barriers to Italy and Spain respectively, but the Rhine was not enough to contain them and these hordes of French mimes rope-pulled themselves into Germany.

In Germany, the virus had already mutated, and the bozo-afflicted there had already turned into something called über-clowns. Mostly this just meant the clowns liked to wear pickelhaube over their outbreaks of Frizzy Hair, but it prevented the mime mutation. But the mime-mutation was stronger than über-clown.

In Britain, where the mime is most hated, the few remaining civil and military authorities realized they were going to be next. Already, the legion of mimes who had taken over the Low Countries and Germany were already gathering on the English Channel, pretending to pull the British Isles closer to them with a rope. It was only a matter of time until they pulled themselves close enough to the Chunnel.

Feeling they had little choice — England was already overrun with Morris Dancers (another variation of the Bozo Virus) — they collapsed the tunnel. Just to be on the safe side, they launched a few tactical nukes around the French terminus of the Chunnel.

Warned that the missiles had been launched, the mimes had pantomimed that they were trapped in glass boxes. This could not protect them from nuclear fission, no matter how convincing their show.

It did atomize and cause a new, more horrible mutation, dubbed by the CDC as: “Jerry Lewis-itis”.